[ Expert Talk Series ] Interview with Jean-Philippe Martzel (DigitasLBi)
As digital advertising and marketing strategies become more and more complex, I thought it would be cool to get a feeling of what experts and pros actually think and do to succeed.
So I’m launching this month a new type of posts: Expert Talks. I’ll meet with advertising and online marketing experts and professionals to provide you insights into how they personnally view their job and the trends they’re keeping tabs on. What does the future of online advertising hold ?
How do they turn marketing goals into participative and engaging online ads? How to make people stick with consumers?
I’m happy to share the first interview with Jean Philippe Martzel, Deputy General Manager and Head of strategic planning at DIGITAS LBi Paris.
On line, your name is almost dead. http://t.co/N2ZvehhObZ
— JeanPhilippe Martzel (@Jpmartzel) 19 Février 2014Q: Hi Jean-Philippe, could you define in a few words what’s your job about ?
Before moving into advertising per se, my job was basically to listen to Clients (i.e Advertisers) in order to convey their message to consumers.
Today in advertising, particularly if you want to tie real links with consumers, my job as head of strategic planning is to do kind of the contrary: I listen to consumers and people. I try to understand what get them thrilled, what they’re passionate about, and how we can connect them with our Clients in the most engaging ways.
The goal today for digital agencies such as Digitas LBi, is to create really engaging campaigns where consumers become actors.
We recently created the Wonderbra Decoder. It’s really innovative and technology-packed but the real success factor was to get people passionate and engaged in this advertsing experience.
With technology, peope have become actors and advertising needs to reshape to allow them to participate, and carry out bi-directional communication with brands.
Q: From your expert and day job perspective, what changes have you observed over the past years that will affect how we make online advertsing ?
Well, it’s kind of obvious but we can’t deny that there are two driving forces behing today’s strategic planning:
1. Social
If it was in the past a small part of online advertsing, it has become now front and center. It’s the driving force of most of the advertsing campaigns we launch for Clients.
2. Data
@Credits: : peppersandrogersgroup.com
At Digitals LBi, we’re very tech-oriented: we have more than 50 engineers who are paving the way in ad tech’ and one of their main focus area is Data. We help our Clients gather data , understand them and then leverage them to create a personalized relation with their audience.
Q: Could you give us one online campaign that really got you excited or caught your attention last year
Well for me, one of the best ad has been Intel Beauty Inside
In a way, it was a rather unexpected creative ad, coming from a more traditional company (chips/hardware). Intel is a highly tech-oriented company, yet they managed to show their true values and inner self to consumers, by getting back to their roots.
Plus as an advocate for participative ads where consumers are active, I really appreciated the fact Intel ads enable people to be the heroes of the story.
Note: Intel had already made a strong impression with its campaign “What happens in an Internet minute”
Q: According to you, what will make in the future a digital agency successful ?
Well, it’s a tough question but more and more advertising agencies will have to be really prove themselves as digital and not only spray digital layers on their campaigns from time to time.
Thinking digital has to become a pilar of the culture in ad agencies if they want to succeed.
You can’t feign it anymore: at Digitas Lbi a third of employees are engineers.
Secondly, we need to bring along technology an expertise on innovative ideation as well. The real talent our Clients wish to tap when working with us is how we manage through our ceativity to use technology to reach their brand objectives.
It boils down to how we’re using our creativity !
We bring “Edge” and “Modernity” to our Clients
IMO, “Edge” is how we use technology (we have an internal Lab of start ups working with us at Digitas LBi) and “Modernity” is how we understand human behavior and social trends to get people engaged and passionate about our digital campaigns.
Q: What is the main difficulty you usually face when crafting digital advertsing campaigns ?
Well, we’re lucky enough to work with Clients that are opened to innovations and actually asking us to leverage technological innovations to help them achieve their business goals.
But from time to time, we can get frustrated as advertisers can be more open to technology innovations than to pure advertising creativity. It’s sometimes harder to launch high risk-high returns ads when you need to risk the extra mile in terms of creativity.
Q: What blogs or websites do you follow?
I usually begin my days by reading the latest articles of Boing Boing which deal with a lot of different topics but you can find sometimes very insightful stuff. The other website i’m a fan of is Internet Actu
Q: Do you have any advice for readers who would like to get deeper knowledge in strategic planning and online advertising?
Well I think the most important quality is to be curious: you need to think that new things are worth knowing and be open to innovations (social and technological)!
And of course, it would definitely be a great asset if you’re fond of the “ad product” itself. If you like creativity and technology, i’m sure you’ll be well equipped to do great things as a strategic planner!